docspell/website/site/content/docs/dev/development.md

+++ title = "Tips & Setup" weight = 20 +++

Setup / Tips

Starting Servers with reStart

When developing, it's very convenient to use the revolver sbt plugin. Start the sbt console and then run:

sbt:docspell-root> restserver/reStart

This starts a REST server. Once this started up, type:

sbt:docspell-root> joex/reStart

if also a joex component is required. Prefixing the commads with ~, results in recompile+restart once a source file is modified.

It is possible to start both in the root project:

sbt:docspell-root> reStart

Custom config file

The sbt build is setup such that a file dev.conf in the directory local (at root of the source tree) is picked up as config file, if it exists. So you can create a custom config file for development. For example, a custom database for development may be setup this way:

#jdbcurl = "jdbc:h2:///home/dev/workspace/projects/docspell/local/docspell-demo.db;MODE=PostgreSQL;DATABASE_TO_LOWER=TRUE;AUTO_SERVER=TRUE"
jdbcurl = "jdbc:postgresql://localhost:5432/docspelldev"
#jdbcurl = "jdbc:mariadb://localhost:3306/docspelldev"

docspell.server {
  backend {
    jdbc {
      url = ${jdbcurl}
      user = "dev"
      password = "dev"
    }
  }
}

docspell.joex {
  jdbc {
    url = ${jdbcurl}
    user = "dev"
    password = "dev"
  }
  scheduler {
    pool-size = 1
  }
}

Installing Nix

It is recommended to install nix. You can use the official installer or this one, which will enable Flakes by default.

If not enabled, enable flakes by creating a config file:

mkdir -p ~/.config/nix  #on Linux
echo "experimental-features = nix-command flakes" >> ~/.config/nix/nix.conf

With nix installed you can use the provided development environments to get started quickly.

Nix Expressions

The soure root contains a flake.nix file to install docspell via the nix package manager and to integrate it into NixOS.

The flake provides docspell packages of the latest release and NixOS modules. It doesn't provide package builds from the current source tree.

Dev Environments

Additionally it provides devshells that can be used to create a development environment for docspell.

These two devShell definitions address two different setups: one uses a NixOS container and the other a VM. Both provide the same set of services that can be used with the local docspell instance:

• postgresql database, with a database docspell and user dev
• solr with a core docspell
• email setup with smtp/imap and webmail
• minio with root user minioadmin

If you are on NixOS the container is probably more convenient to use. For other systems, the vm should be good. Drop into either shell by running:

# drop into the environment setup for using a vm
nix develop .#dev-vm

# drop into the environment setup for using a container
nix deveop .#docsp-dev

Once in such an environment, you can create the container or vm like this:

# dev-vm env
# - build the vm
vm-build

# -run the vm
vm-run

# - ssh into the vm
vm-ssh

# docsp-dev container env
# - create the container
cnt-recreate

# - login
cnt-login

You can use tab completion on vm- or cnt- and see other useful commands. For instance it allows to recreate solr cores or check logs of services on the container or vm.

Then you can adjust your dev config file in local/dev.conf to connect to the services on the vm or container. The container exposes the default ports while the vm uses port-forwarding from the host to the guest machine. The ports are define in flake.nix. For example, a jdbc connection to postgres on the container can look like this:

jdbc.url = "jdbc:postgresql://docsp-dev:5432/docspelldev"

on the vm, it would be

jdbc.url = "jdbc:postgresql://localhost:6543/docspelldev"

You can reach the webmail on both versions at port 8080. In order to enable sending mails between users, you need to login as some arbitrary user so the underlying services can create the data directories. In your dev docspell you can then connect to smtp on the vm or container. Mails send from docspell can be checked in the webmail. Conversely, you can send mails using webmail to any user and have their mailbox scanned by docspell.

Direnv

Using direnv entering the dev environment is very convenient. Install this tool (it also has integration in several IDEs and editors) and create a file .envrc in the source root:

use flake .#<env-name>

The file .envrc is git-ignored, because are different ones possible. Here <env-name> refers to either dev-cnt or dev-vm - one of the devshells defined in flake.nix.

After allowing direnv to execute this file via direnv allow you will be dropped into this environment whenever you enter the directory. It will also preserve your shell, don't need to use bash.

Checks

The command nix flake check would run all checks defined in the flake. It will build both packages and runs a vm with docspell installed (via NixOS modules) and check whether the services come up.

Test VM

There is another VM defined in the flake that provides a full setup for docspell. It contains docspell server and joex, a postgresql, a solr and a email setup. The intention is to use it as an easy 'getting started' approach with nix.

Once it has started, you can connect to localhost:7881 to reach docspell. The webmail will be available at localhost:8080.

You can run this vm with a single command:

nix run github:eikek/docspell#nixosConfigurations.test-vm.config.system.build.vm

It uses the same setup as the dev-vm, so you can drop into the .#dev-vm development shell and use vm-ssh to connect to the running test vm.

Once connected to the machine, you can see the docspell config file via

systemctl show docspell-joex.service | grep "ExecStart=" | sed 's/^ExecStart=.*path=\([^;]*\).*/\1/' | xargs tac | grep -m 1 . | awk '{print $NF}' | tr -d '"' | xargs jq '.'
# or replace "joex" with "restserver"
systemctl show docspell-restserver.service | grep "ExecStart=" | sed 's/^ExecStart=.*path=\([^;]*\).*/\1/' | xargs tac | grep -m 1 . | awk '{print $NF}' | tr -d '"' | xargs jq '.'

Developing Frontend

The frontend is a SPA written in Elm. The UI framework in use is tailwind.

The frontend code is in the sub-project webapp. Running sbt's compile task, compiles elm sources and creates the final CSS file. Whenever the restserver module is build by sbt, the webapp sub-project is built as well and the final files to deliver are updated. So, when in sbt shell, "watch-compile" the project restserver, (via ~ restserver/compile), re-compiles elm-code on change. However, it also re-creates the final css, which is a rather long task.

To speed things up when only developing the frontend, a bash script is provided in project/dev-ui-build.sh. Start the restserver once, using restserver/reStart task as described above. Then run this script in the source root. It will watch elm files and the css file and re-compiles only on change writing the resulting files in the correct locations so they get picked up by the restserver.

Now you can edit elm files and the index.css and then only refresh the page. Elm compilation is very fast, it's difficult to reach the refresh button before it is done compiling :). When editing the CSS, it takes a little longer, but this is hardly necessary, thanks to tailwind.

There is still a problem: the browser caches the js and css files by default, so a page refresh is not enough, you need to clear the cache, too. To avoid this annoyance, set a env variable DOCSPELL_ENV to the value dev. Docspell then adds a response header, preventing the browser to cache these files. This must be done, obviously, before starting the restserver:

$ export DOCSPELL_ENV=dev
$ sbt "restserver/reStart"

Developing Backend

OpenAPI

The http API is specified in the corresponding -openapi.yml file. The component section is being used to generate code for the client and the server, so that both are always in sync. However, the route definitions are not checked against the server implementation.

Changes to the openapi files can be checked by running a sbt task:

restapi/openapiLint //and/or
joexapi/openapiLint

These tasks must not show any errors (it is checked by the CI). The warnings should also be fixed.

Release

The CI and making a release is done via github actions. The workflow is roughly like this:

• each PR is only merged if the sbt ci task returns successfully. This is ensured by the ci.yml workflow that triggers on each pull request
• each commit to the master branch is also going through sbt ci and then a prerelease is created. The tag nightly is used to point to the latest commit in master. Note, that this is discouraged by git, but github doesn't allow to create a release without a tag. So this tag moves (and is not really a tag then…). After the prerelease is created, the docker images are built and pushed to docker hub into the docspell organization. The docker images are also tagged with nightly at docker hub. This is all done via the realease-nightly.yml workflow.
• A stable release is started by pushing a tag with pattern v* to github. This triggers the release.yml workflow which builds the packages and creates a release in draft mode. The sbt ci task is not run, because it is meant to only release commits already in the master branch. After this completes, the release notes need to be added manually and then the release must be published at github. This then triggers the docker-images.yml workflow, which builds the corresponding docker images and pushes them to docker hub. The docker images are tagged with the exact version and the latest tag is moved to the new images. Another manual step is to set the branch current-docs to its new state and push it to github. This will trigger a build+publish of the website.
• Publishing the website happens automatically on each push to the branch current-docs. Changes to the current website must be based on this branch.

Some notes: I wanted a 2/3 step process when doing a stable release, to be able to add release notes manually (I don't want this to be automated right now) and to do some testing with the packages before publishing the release. However, for the nightly releases, this doesn't matter - everything must be automated here obviously. I also wanted the docker images to be built from the exact same artifacts that have been released at github (in contrast to being built again).